


Directions

by languageintostillair



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (and a tiny bit of smut), Canon - Book, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21584629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair
Summary: Her knighthood is useless now, and so is his. There is no place for them in this new world order.But this does not mean that Jaime Lannister gets to wander about the Riverlands with her in tow, looking for a sept that he claims exists. So he can marry her. Again. Which he wouldnothave to do if the first one hadnotbeen annulled, athisbehest.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 32
Kudos: 161





	Directions

**Author's Note:**

> A standalone, very slightly expanded version of two ficlets I wrote for [my Fictober series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634) (Days 2 and 26). It's one of my favourites from that project, and I've been meaning to edit it into a proper one-shot. This story is set in book!verse, but I slipped in a couple of show elements.

**I.**

She should have let the Others kill him.

If Brienne of Tarth had let the Others kill Jaime Lannister, she would _not_ be in this predicament.

It would have been so easy. She had saved him so many times on the battlefield. If she had foreseen this happening, she could have just— _not_ saved him, one of those times.

“Just follow me. I know the area,” he had said. Ridiculous man. Just because he led the Lannister armies through the Riverlands does _not_ mean he is truly familiar with every corner and crevice in the region. Not in the way he should be, for _this purpose_. The reason why they have been walking in this thrice-damned forest for the _whole day_.

Oh look—it’s that tree again. She is very sure she’s seen that tree before. It looks like all the others, but she is very sure she’s seen it before. But if she says, “Jaime, it’s that tree again,” he will say, “It’s a different tree, wench. I know where I’m going.”

Gods. To think they wouldn’t even be here in the first place if Jaime hadn’t been seized by a bout of self-loathing and _had their marriage annulled_. It was a perfectly agreeable, if expedient, marriage. They had yet to consummate the union at the point of its dissolution, of course, but Brienne had actually started getting used to the idea of him as her husband. Then, he had to go and tell her he was a _hateful man_ , and all that nonsense. If he was such a _hateful man_ , he wouldn’t have lost his hand for her. Fought a bear for her. He wouldn’t have dragged her, half-dead, all the way to the Quiet Isle. He wouldn’t have married her just so he could stay by her side while she healed.

( _He wouldn’t have listened to her lies at Pennytree, and followed her after, to—_

 _No. She won’t think of that_.)

To make it all even more preposterous, Brienne had given him her maidenhead _just weeks later_. Because Jaime had seduced her. With knighthood. He had knighted her, and then she had let him fuck her, because he is also very beautiful and she is _weak_. He had put his sword to her shoulder as she knelt before him, spoken those words to her, _in the name of the_ —oh, and those words were sweeter than anything. And then later, when they were alone, he had put his hand on her scarred cheek, and kissed her there, and whispered of the blue of her eyes, _the bastard_ , and she was still thinking of how he had _charged her to be brave_. She felt _weak_ , lost, drunk on the green of _his_ eyes and the gold of his hair and her fingers dared to thread themselves through his beard and the next thing she knew—

Now here she is. _Weak_ and walking in circles with Jaime ‘I know where I’m going’ Lannister.

Her knighthood is useless now, and so is his. There is no place for them in this new world order. They serve no king, nor queen; no lord, nor lady; no noble houses, not even their own. They could barely call themselves hedge knights, for there is no cause for which they can offer their services, no one to employ them for those causes. They use their swords only to spar with each other. A waste of Valyrian steel.

But none of this means Jaime Lannister gets to wander about the Riverlands with her in tow, looking for a sept that he claims exists. So he can marry her. Again. Which he would _not_ have to do if the first one had _not_ been annulled, at _his_ behest.

There is no sept. There is no village to go with the sept. There is no inn to go with the village to go with the sept. Oh, she really wants an inn right now. Is it getting dark? They set off in the morning, for Seven’s sake. “It’s an hour’s walk away, at most.” _No, it is not._ She wants an inn, and she wants a bed. She’s gone much longer without one, but she’s angry at Jaime and she wants a comfortable bed. She can fuck him in that comfortable bed at least, if she’s in the mood. Sometimes it feels better when she’s angry at him. And it’ll also feel better to fuck him in that comfortable bed rather than on the ground in this neverending forest.

“There it is,” Jaime cries, jolting her out of her reverie, out of imaginary beds and the things they could do in them. “I see it! I’ll make a wife of you yet, wench.”

This is not the first time today that Jaime has said such words. She palms the pommel of Oathkeeper, thinks she might jab the lion’s head in some sensitive places on Jaime’s body if he keeps this up. But she looks through the trees, and maybe, _maybe_ Brienne sees the moss-covered brick of a small building that _could_ be a sept. Thank the Gods.

Now, to find an inn.

**II.**

They didn’t find an inn.

By the time they had left the sept, it was already getting dark. They had left behind a septon still deeply perplexed by the two wandering knights who had barged in on his tiny sept in the middle of the forest. One of them a woman in armour, no less, and taller than the man. The man had loudly demanded a wedding ceremony to be performed immediately, while the woman looked decidedly unenthused by the prospect. Brienne supposed this might have worried the septon slightly, because he had looked at her with a concerned expression—though surely with a sword hanging at her hip he could expect her to defend herself from any unwanted unions. Even a union with Jaime ‘I know where I’m going’ Lannister.

(The septon had likely been even more perplexed by the end of the ceremony—by the intensity with which the decidedly unenthused woman still managed to kiss the loudly demanding man. But Brienne had been holding in so much irritation at Jaime for dragging her around a forest in search of a sept—one that, again, _they wouldn’t have needed if he hadn’t annulled their first marriage_. She just needed somewhere to put all of that irritation, even if that somewhere was Jaime’s lips. Even if Jaime grinned smugly into that kiss.)

After, the septon had told them that the nearest inn was an hour’s walk away. But the last time someone told Brienne something was an hour’s walk away, _it really wasn’t._ So they didn’t find an inn, didn’t even bother to venture in that direction. Instead, they are now lying on their joined bedrolls, warming themselves by the fire they’ve built in an open space between a sheltered grove and a small creek. It is far too dark to tell, but Brienne supposes their surroundings could be picturesque. Maybe she will appreciate it when she wakes in the morning. There might be, oh, dewdrops perched delicately on the leaves and whatnot, and perhaps the early morning sun might be so inclined to dance on the surface of the water or some such, to the tune of melodious birdsong.

But— _Gods_. Gods, did she want to sleep in a proper bed tonight.

“You do realise, Jaime,” she says, as she undoes the laces at her collar, and lets him kiss his way down her neck, “that this is our wedding night. We’re sleeping on the cold, hard ground on our— _ah_ —” (his tongue had met her clavicle) “—wedding night. Not even in an _inn_ , Jaime.”

“You keep me warm, wife, on this cold, hard ground. As I do you, I trust,” he replies, as he pushes up the hem of her tunic. He doesn’t bother stripping her of the garment fully. He would have, if they were in an inn— _which they are most definitely not_ —but it is too cold tonight, even by the fire. Jaime is undeterred; his mouth is adamant in its exploration between one rib and the next, across the slight dip framed by her ribcage as she arches towards him. It is as if he is travelling those paths for the very first time, though Brienne’s body knows they are well tread. “Who needs inns?” Jaime mumbles, just before his mouth becomes otherwise preoccupied with her breasts.

 _I do_ , Brienne wants to say. _I need inns. I want a bed._ But Jaime’s flesh hand is making its way down to her seam, to the bud that lies beneath the folds at its crest, and soon enough he is bringing her so close to her peak that the sounds leaving her throat cannot metamorphose into words. Her yearning for an inn is overtaken by a desire for something quite other than that.

Until he draws his hand back just seconds too early.

Brienne groans in frustration. Seven hells, she was so _close_ , and now she can already feel herself receding from her pleasure. “Is it your intent to torture me today, husband?” she scolds. Thoughts of inns and beds—the ones from before and the ones yet to be graced by their presence—flood back into her mind.

Jaime just smirks. “Hmm,” he murmurs, as he moves further down her body. He pulls down her breeches and smallclothes in tandem, just far enough. She has the absurd thought that he actually _does_ know where he’s going right now, after a day of being lost in the woods. “I like it when you call me husband. Will you do so only when I frustrate you, wife?”

 _That would be always, then_ —is a thought she wants to speak but fails to yet again, because his mouth is _on her now_ , and when just moments ago she had thought that his fingers would be all she ever wanted, now it is his lips, his tongue, his teeth, and she finds for the umpteenth time that she can forgive every word he’s ever said that’s caused her any amount agony, if this is the pleasure that she can receive from that very same part of his body.

When she guides him into her entrance, tastes herself upon his lips, she thinks perhaps she can forget that they are on the cold, hard ground—they’ve done this so many times before, in any case. Perhaps she can forget that he spent most of the day dragging her around the Riverlands, looking for a sept that he claimed to be an hour’s walk away. He is her husband now, in the eyes of the Seven, though she had felt like his wife for for far longer than just these past few hours. Now, _now_ she can call him ‘husband’, use that word in its entirety, scold him with it with no kernel of untruth. Each time she says that word, she can forget that he annulled their marriage once before—the pain that act had brought her, though she didn’t fully understand it at the time, didn’t know how much she wanted to be his wife. When she calls him ‘husband’, she will remember only that he saved her time and again, as she has done for him; that he knighted her, and rediscovered his own knighthood in her; that they find new pleasures and vexations in each other every day. She will remember that they’ve loved each other since before the end of the world, that they will continue to do so in all the years that come after—as they wander through forests, or sail across seas, and maybe even, Gods willing, step foot in a damn inn every once in a while. They will do this all with Valyrian steel swords strapped to each of their hips. Two swords forged from the same blade.

(Even if one of those swords can’t be trusted with directions.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roccolinde) for betaing, and for suggesting the new last line (and inadvertently the title)!


End file.
